6/28/2013

Obama EEOC tells BMW & Dollar General to Hire Ex-Cons or Be Sued For Racism

In yet another attack on business by the Obama Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Dollar General and BMW America, claiming that conducting background checks for a criminal past on potential hires amounts to discrimination.

The EEOC claims that even though the companies were following existing law, which requires them to do the checks, they used the information in considering hires, thus it is racist because a majority of those with criminal records are black or hispanic. The EEOC says the policy has a "disparate impact" on minorities and causes a disproportionate number of blacks to be screened out of jobs due to their criminal records.

Well, duh! My dad told me a long time ago that there are consequences to my actions, and that some of those could have negative impacts on what I want to do in life. He used to say, "You can have a thousand 'atta boys', and it only take one 'aw sh*t' to cancel them all out". And that one screw-up can affect you for years, or even decades. Regaining trust, once broken, is a difficult thing to recover. You can say "it isn't fair", and maybe it isn't always fair, but it is reality. The person that breaks a trust has to work ten-fold to turn that impression around. Well, enough of my rant.

In this case, the EEOC is going after employers who are following the law, yet are still being harrassed by an overreaching and ham-fisted federal government. On the one hand, the government says that the companies must do the checks, while on the other they say to discount what the checks may discover, Worse, they are essentially saying that if a person has a criminal record they should be moved to the top of the list to eliminate the "appearance" of discrimination.

The federal government can't have it both ways. If they don't hire a person based on a criminal record, they open themselves up to being sued for discrimination. If they do hire the person, and that person steals from the company, or has an incident of workplace violence, the company opens itself up to loss of assets, or to litigation from its employees for hiring a known felon.

The Obama Administration continues its hostile, jack-booted march on the private sector,